Note to car manufacturers:

[SoCalDem]

Just make an economical, safe car that does not take more than 3 years to pay for...

Y'know, like you USED TO DO!!

Make a BASIC car, and make the "amenities" special-order, like they used to be..

People LIKE new cars, but they end up keeping their old ones longer because your damned cars just cost too much..

As "real" wages go DOWN, and car prices keep going UP, are you really surprised that you are selling less of them?

[xchrom]

1. we're not doing much to see that americans get

wage increases.

in fact that just seems to be off the radar.

[Winterblues]

8. Oh I don't know, the Legislature in Alaska just doubled their own pay.

:shrug:

[cliffordu]

16. Yep-.As far as I can tell...We aren't doing ANYTHING about wages.

Unless of course it's bailout millions in bonuses....

[graywarrior]

2. And a car that gets more than 35 miles per gallon

Something like 100 mpg. Is that so hard?

[fumsm]

3. Have you priced an Accord, or Toyota lately?

Northing's cheap.

[SoCalDem]

4. I'm not limiting my complaint to any country's offerings..

they ALL cost too dmaned much for most people.. and yes.. we DO have an Accord EX, so i know what they cost..

[MindPilot]

5. actually new cars don't cost more than they used to if you

look at it in terms of how long you have to work to buy it.
In 1975, an average new car would cost about 6 months of my pay. In 2009, a new car costs about 6 months of my pay.

But what has gone up disproportionately is housing. In 1975, I could buy a house for about two year's pay. Now I have to work about five years for that house. That's why we can't afford cars.

[n2doc]

6. And food and health care and all the other things

Hell, houses used to be 1x years pay if you wanted something basic. Even in 1976 my mom was able to buy an acre of land with small house in the cal bay area for less than 2x her pay as an x-ray tech. Same place went for 30x that price in 2006, with no, absolutely no, improvements. It was sold as a tear down (we had sold a long time ago, alas). X-ray tech wages have doubled, if that much, during that time....

[Name removed]

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[xchrom]

10. real wages have going down since the 70s -- accelerated under reagan.

and they have continued to go down -- except for pockets -- regionally.

all well documented.

putting environmental regs on a product might make the price go up -- but results in an healthier environment for people to live.

what we havent done is face down our obssesion with 'The Financial Institutions' -- treating them as if they were the new Gold Standard -- and
forcing our workers into competing with work forces that make far, far less than ours do with globalization.

[SteelPenguin]

9. They do

The Chevy Aveo for instance costs 12.6 k base and gets 35 mpg highway. Can pay it off in 3 years with about 250-300 a month, less if you put money down. It's a basic, safe, and economical car, and even comes with that new car smell.

[EOTE]

11. The Aveo is actually a Daewoo, built in South Korea.

I think that American manufacturers need to fill in those gaps where only Asian and European manufacturers are making cars now. I think it's a good thing that GM offers rebadged cars like the Aveo and the new Saturn Astra (based upon the Opel Astra) in the cheap sub-compact market, but I think they should have been retooling a while ago to build cars like these themselves. It's never too late (or is it?), I hope they get working on that soon. I used to be all about larger sedans (I'm a pretty big guy), but recently I found that even my large 6'5" frame can be comfortable in rather small cars if they make good use of the space that they're given. I now drive a fairly tiny VW GTI and I've got more than enough head and leg room and wouldn't mind if the cabin were actually smaller. I'm fairly sure my next car is going to be a domestic, probably a GM. I just hope that by the time I'm looking for a new car, GM has something small, fun and efficient that makes good use of the interior room it has. I like the Cobalt/G5, but I'm hoping they'll have something with similar quality and fit and finish, but in a smaller, cheaper package.

[TreasonousBastard]

14. Part of the problem is that the profit in an Equinox is...

a lot more than that of any econobox. And there's those legacy costs of a few thousand bucks per unit that keep US built econoboxes more expensive than Asian ones.

So, aside from the silly wailing about evil profits, any company has to make enough money to stay in business, and GM was doing pretty well with Escalade profits keeping factories open. Until recently, anyway.

[SteelPenguin]

15. yeah but...

his point was that they weren't being offered, and that the ones they did were too expensive, as a reasoning to why people were buying less cars, as a reasoning, I assume, to why General Motors is in trouble.

When really they do offer cars like that (granted made in South Korea) which aren't to expensive, which is not the reason people are buying less cars, which isn't the reason General Motors is in trouble.

GM is in trouble because a) their overwhealming legacy (pension, etc) costs applied to each car and b) the perception that their cars aren't as good as Hondas.

(I'm not saying here that GM's cars are worse than Honda or Toyota's. I'm just saying that's the overall perception)

This causes them to lose thousands of dollars per car that other companies don't, and forces them to charge thousands of dollars less for those cars that other companies don't. If GM didn't have their legacy issues, we had universal health care in this country, and they could charge a comparable amount for their cars as toyota and honda they'd have made over 36 billion in additional profit last year. They ended up losing 30 billion. So if they didn't have those problems which have nothing to do with their cars, and were able to get Americans to perceive their cars as an equal value to the japanese cars they'd have actually made 6 billion dollars in profit last year.

[TreasonousBastard]

12. Heh! Then they say they need something bigger, and...

something safer, and what they really want is the Impala at an Aveo price.

Just for shits and giggles, count all every Yaris, Fit, Aveo, Focus, Versa, and any other econobox you can think of and see if the total of all of them you see very day equals the number of Explorers or Grand Cherokees you see. Or Camry or Accord.

And then listen to the "They're not making what we want" chorus again.

[SteelPenguin]

17. Well that gets to the truth of it

you can get a minivan for 22k but it doesn't have the built in gps, the built in dvd player, the hand free bluetooth, the nicer heated seats, etc, etc...and people complain.

Or they say "yeah but I can't get my 2 kids and my dog in that." which to me means that they either need to teach their dog to squeeze in better, or to realize that maybe they're not in the base model market anymore. Yeah you could get a base model car in the not to distant past for 4k but it also didn't have airbags, right side mirrors, air conditioning, a radio, etc. You're not getting leather seats, a built in dvd player, and a hands free bluetooth and gps computer built in for the base price.

[flvegan]

13. It should also do 0-60 in under 5 seconds.

Cheap, safe and chock full of horsepower. Priorities.

[Ron Green]

18. Another note to car manufacturers:

Start building trains and phase out what is certainly an unsustainable mode.